by Amy Valenti
“Oh! I know her. Not know her, but know of her,” she amended, and I recalled she was one of One Last Look’s superfans. “She was really good.”
I made a mental note to rib Callum about collaring one of his fans later.
Callum glanced at me. “That’s what he said…”
“You’re so fuckin’ mature,” I grumbled, and knocked back more beer. “She’s got an action movie coming up, needs some work on her muscle tone for the role. I took her on as a client.”
Kat rested her chin on her knees, her arms wrapped around her shins, and waited for me to go on.
“Long story short, she’s submissive to me, I couldn’t stop myself from fucking her and now I’m in deep shit.”
“Did she enjoy it?” Kat asked.
Alex’s whimpers and gasps came back to the forefront of my mind, making my cock twitch. I looked away from Kat, hoping she wouldn’t notice. “Without a doubt.”
“Then why are you in deep shit?” she asked. “Fun was had; everyone’s happy, right?”
Callum put the sausages on the barbecue, and the sound of hissing gave way to the scent of cooking meat. He didn’t correct his submissive’s assumption, and I had to take a minute or two to think about how to approach the situation without spilling my guts about Kristin.
“You of all people should know things aren’t that easy all the time, Kat.”
She looked down, as if conceding the point. “Yeah, but I do know that good Doms are hard to find, and you’re one of the good ones.”
“Yeah? Callum been telling tales on me?” I shot a sharp gaze at his back.
“I told her you had a bad breakup. That’s all I told her.” His tone carried an unspoken warning for me to calm down.
I sighed. “That’s all I told Alex. She could tell there was something going on with me. Bad breakup seems like such a fucking understatement, though.”
“Did you scene with her?” Callum turned the sausages without looking back at me.
I could have gone into details, but it seemed wrong to kiss and tell. “No. But I was…dominant. Gave orders she followed to the letter and loved. Physically, nothing more than pulling her hair.”
“Then why worry about what you’re calling it?” Kat tilted her head to one side. “Lots of people have vanilla sex with one person more dominant than the other. I did, in between the bad stuff and Callum.”
“It’s…complicated.” I changed the subject. “When did the collaring happen?”
Kat blushed a little and touched her collar again. “It’s not a proper collar, not really. Not a formal one.”
Callum took the batch of sausages off the grill and put the plate aside. “Grab some bread before they get cold, guys.”
Kat made a sausage sandwich, then surprised me by pushing it towards me. “Sauces and stuff are behind you.”
I found the tomato sauce on the window ledge and popped it open. “You never struck me as a service-oriented submissive, Kat.”
“No, but it’s a damn sandwich. Not everything’s about kink, is it?” She busied herself with her own sandwich. “Sir, I’m not leaving you any.”
He rolled his eyes, no real irritation in his gaze. The extra meat on the grill probably had to do with that. “See what I have to put up with?”
“So this is what?” I asked him. “Collar of protection? Consideration?”
“Nothing with a name. It’s not like I have to protect her from other Doms, and I don’t need to consider anything when it comes to Kat. I just like to see her in a collar. Every now and then it’s fun to attach it to stuff.” The evil look he shot at Kat had her blushing to the roots of her hair. “When I make it official, you’ll know it.”
I wasn’t going to ask when or where that might be. I had my own submissive’s issues to deal with—fuck, I was even referring to Alex as my submissive in my mind, now.
“Cal, I have a favour to ask.”
He flipped his own sausages off the grill, grabbed a bread bun and made a sandwich before sitting down beside me. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“I want to borrow your sub.”
He glanced at me sharply. “Hell, no.”
His overprotectiveness was amusing. “I didn’t mean like that. No disrespect, Kat, but you’re not my type.”
“That’s okay. You’re not mine either,” she said, her mouth half full of sandwich, and I grinned.
Callum was scowling at me, waiting for my explanation. I considered drawing it out a little longer, but I wanted to get back to eating. “I’d like for Kat to get to know Alex. Just in case something happens. Something like…before.”
Kat was obviously mystified, but Callum got my point. “You want an extra link to her, to monitor her mental state.”
Kat pulled a face, then waved her hand in the air. “Permission to speak my mind very plainly?”
I raised an eyebrow at Callum, who had tensed a little. Obviously, when Kat spoke her mind there could be fallout.
“Granted, little miss.”
She stood up, putting herself on a level with us. “You’re treating this poor girl like a time bomb, or an experiment. Drafting contingency plans for in case something goes wrong. I don’t know what kind of something you’re talking about, and I know you don’t want to tell me, Spencer. But she’s a human being with human emotions, and needs, and wants, and desires. Don’t treat her like you know what’s better for her than she does. I haven’t met her, so I can’t say whether or not she’d let you get away with it, but from my perspective, it’s just a weird way to treat a woman. Let her have control of her own sexual destiny, for God’s sake.”
Callum grinned at his submissive. “You do have a way with words, Little Miss Badass.”
She shot him a look that promised both a reprimand and a sexual escapade or two later, and I focused on finishing my food, irritated by their connection. Envious again.
“Do I or don’t I have a point?” Kat folded her arms over her chest, looking at me.
“You do,” I allowed reluctantly.
For a while, there was silence.
“Compromise,” Callum said. “Kat gets to meet Alex, but no monitoring of mental states. If there’s friendship there, great. If you two do get into D/s territory, she’ll need a fellow sub to talk to, and I’d like Kat to have more subs around her too.”
“I would like to see what makes other subs tick,” Kat allowed slowly. “The club thing isn’t something I can do, so it’s a little difficult for me to meet other kinky people. So far, Callum’s been too busy to take me to a munch.”
“If we do this, you don’t mention D/s to her unless she brings it up first.” I fixed her with a stare I hadn’t given a woman for a long time—a non-verbal command from Dominant to another Dom’s submissive. “I swear to God, Kat, if you put ideas in her head that weren’t there—”
Callum put a hand on my arm, and I sensed the warning in it. I was getting too intense with his sub. Fine. I dropped the subject.
“I’ll make sure she understands later. You can back off.”
I nodded.
“What else is new with you?” he asked, changing the subject entirely.
The rest of the evening was pleasant enough. Some of it, we spent reminiscing over the truly terrible pilot episodes we’d all been working on when Callum met Kat for the first time. Mercifully, the network hadn’t commissioned a full series of Dark Hearts Broken, so the favour Callum and I had been doing for a mutual friend on the scene had ended there. There were still plenty of things to remember about that godawful couple of weeks in New York City, including some of the worst lines of dialogue I’d ever seen acted out on a set.
A few hours later, when Kat had left the room to take a phone call and I was readying myself to leave, Callum brought up the subject of Alex again. “Kat has a good point, Spencer. Don’t let your own issues fuck this up for you both. Call her your sub, call her your girl, call her your friend with benefits. Whatever. All that matters is that you’re both into what y
ou do. High protocol and public scenes and all that shit don’t matter if you care for her. Just enjoy her, let her enjoy you. Vanilla’s not a death sentence.”
Easy for you to fuckin’ say.
* * * *
Spencer
“Why am I doing this again?” I asked unenthusiastically, as the limo pulled up to the event venue.
“You’re saving me from a horrible staged date with a famous guy who’s not my type, and in the process ensuring a ton of grateful sex acts will be heaped down upon you,” Alex murmured, quietly enough that the couple we were sharing the limo with, who were actually stars of the movie that was premiering, didn’t hear.
“I’m gonna hold you to that.” I hated wearing tuxedos, and the only reason I’d let Alex wheedle me into this was the possessiveness that had taken hold when I’d thought of her on some other guy’s arm.
“Please do,” she purred, and took my hand as the chauffeur opened the limo door. “Let’s go!”
Hank Rollins and Jessica McGlynn—TV star friends of Alex’s breaking out into their first movie roles—exchanged nervous, excited glances, then stepped out into a storm of paparazzi camera flashes and called questions. We waited thirty seconds or so before following, and I relaxed a little as most of the press assessed us, realised we weren’t headline-makers and resumed frantically trying to get the attention of the actor and actress already on the carpet.
Alex took my arm, giving no sign that she was perturbed by the lack of press interest in her. She probably wasn’t. We’d only been together a week, but she had yet to show any signs of being up her own ass about her career.
As we walked past the posing stars, a voice from the crowd called Alex’s name. She glanced around, then smiled and halted me for a second. “Do you mind?”
“As long as you don’t leave me here to stand in the middle of the red carpet like an ass,” I told her, and she grinned.
“Come on, you big baby. They’re only newshounds out for celebrity blood. I’m not famous enough for them to leap on me yet. Let’s just get this done.”
I let her tow me over to where a female reporter stuck a microphone in her face. “Ms. Ashford, I loved you in One Last Look. We’ve just seen the casting announcement for Walk on Glass. Could you tell me how a relative unknown like yourself managed to get the part in such a high-profile movie?”
I kept quiet, though I wanted to give the woman a piece of my mind for the subtle put-down. Alex didn’t look fazed, however.
“I read for the role because I was a huge fan of the book the movie’s based on. I didn’t expect to get the part, but if I hadn’t at least tried, I’d have been kicking myself for it for the rest of my life, you know? I just about dropped dead when they asked me to come in for a second reading. I think it was my martial arts knowledge that helped me to get the part.”
If the reporter asked who I was, I was going to leap over the barrier and disappear into the crowd. I didn’t want to end up in some gossip rag.
“Your character, Marina Lane, will be kicking some serious ass. Are you ready to do the same?”
“Absolutely,” Alex agreed with a grin. “I’m sorry—I have to move on, but thanks so much for your interest.”
Before the reporter could say anything else, we moved a few steps farther down the red carpet—not that far, but a dozen reporters away.
Seeing the first one’s interest, a couple more people had realised who Alex was, and she posed for pictures and answered a couple more questions while I waited in the theatre doorway, glad to be out of the limelight. God, famous people. I could never understand how people strived to get to this stage.
“Thanks for putting up with that,” Alex said, once we were safely inside the theatre. “I forget how weird it must be if you’re not used to going to these things. I mean, I don’t get out much, but I do go to the occasional premiere to give friends moral support. You’d probably rather be back at the gym, huh?”
“Hey, you promised me you’d owe me. What guy could resist that invitation?” I resisted the urge to kiss her in favour of ribbing her instead.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, let’s get this over with so you can start collecting.”
We headed deeper into the theatre and found our seats. As we got settled, I noticed a familiar couple sitting a few rows ahead of us. “Hey, is that Callum?”
Alex craned her neck and smiled. “And I assume that’s his lady. I didn’t realise they were gonna be here tonight.”
The theatre was filling up fast and ushers were scowling at people who left their seats. I pulled out my phone instead and sent Callum a text. Look behind you.
He did, frowning, and Alex waved, standing up to catch his attention. He noticed her and grinned, then raised both eyebrows when he registered I was her date. Quickly, he sent a text back. YOU in a tux? This must be love. Either that, or you’re the sub.
I made a face at him and put my phone away before Alex could see what he’d written. I sensed her curious gaze, but refused to tell her what the text had said. It was way too early to be thinking about the L word. And the S word was definitely nowhere near accurate.
Callum tapped his date on the shoulder, and Kat’s familiar face turned up to seek me out. I gave her a small wave and got a warm smile in return.
Then Kat saw whom I was escorting and her eyes widened. I had to laugh as she nudged Callum excitedly.
“You have a fan,” I said to Alex.
“I do?” She noticed Kat staring at her and laughed, waving hello. “I see. Callum said she was a One Last Look fan. I assume she recognises me from that.”
“That’d be a good bet.”
“If the ushers didn’t look so stressed, I’d suggest going down there to talk to them.” Alex sighed. “Guess we’ll just have to catch up afterwards.”
The theatre was almost full now, the premiere highly anticipated. Romantic comedy wasn’t my favourite genre, but I’d sit through it if Alex was beside me.
She reached out to take my hand when the lights faded and the movie was introduced. It had been forever since I’d experienced such simple public intimacy.
I could wait through this movie. For her.
And didn’t that just make me a total sap?
* * * *
Alex
After the movie—which wasn’t too bad, though a little less than what it had been hyped up to be—we met Callum and Kat at the exit to the theatre. Kat glowed and shook my hand enthusiastically when Callum introduced us, which was sweet. Tonight had turned out to be a little more high-profile than other premieres I’d been to, though since my casting had been announced for Walk on Glass, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The book had a hardcore following, and I was starting to get recognised a little more already.
Callum and I caught up quickly as Spencer and Kat greeted each other. I cast them a sideways glance, but there didn’t seem to be anything besides friendly affection between them, which was more of a relief than I’d have liked. Even though I’d been the one to push for this advance in my relationship with Spencer, I still wasn’t sure I liked how strong my feelings were becoming.
Callum invited us back to his place for drinks, but I had a promise to keep. I declined, saying I had some rigorous training to go through in the morning and that my trainer was a total slave-driver, so I should probably get an early night. Both Callum and Kat seemed to find that way too funny. I wondered if my need to get Spencer home and rip him out of that tux was that transparent.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.” Spencer held out his arm and I took it, smiling. We bade farewell to the grinning couple and headed down the street towards the nearest taxi rank. The big stars had yet to leave, so I was unaccosted by the media.
“Did I say something funny?” I asked, as soon as we were in the taxi heading for my place.
Spencer shook his head. “Private joke. It wouldn’t make any sense to you if I explained it.”
I wasn’t sure that was the case, but I was willing to l
et it drop. “Okay…”
“So when do I get to start reaping the rewards of accompanying you tonight?” Spencer asked, his voice low and husky.
“The very second we’re alone.” I batted my eyelashes at him. “Just remember not to rip the dress. It’s on loan from a friend who’s considerably wealthier than I am.”
He eyed it appreciatively, not for the first time. He hadn’t said anything when I’d appeared wearing it, but his gaze had eaten me up, telling me all I needed to know. I wasn’t about to make a fuss about the words not actually coming out of his mouth.
“Do I need to tell you how very fuckable you look in that tux?” I asked him in a whisper.
He shifted in his seat, and I was willing to bet the words were hardening his cock even as I spoke them. “I think I could stand to hear the word ‘fuck’ from your mouth a few hundred more times tonight.”
Imagining what he might do to get me to say it, moan it, scream it, I wriggled a little myself. “Maybe not hundreds of times, but I think I could use it a few fucking more.”
He grinned. “You’re more foul-mouthed than Lena Heady.”
I laughed. I hadn’t met the woman personally, but I’d watched her DVD commentaries of Game of Thrones episodes. “I’m gonna take that as a compliment, Mr. Hyde.”
As though seeing me ponder as soon as the name came from my lips, he cautioned me, “Don’t make that joke.”
“What, the one about how you must have a split personality, and Mr. Hyde only comes out when you fuck?”
He closed his eyes, a silent curse forming on his lips. “I hadn’t heard that one before, but something along those lines.”
I laughed. It was so easy to sexually frustrate him, here in the back of a taxi zipping out of Hollywood. In a few more minutes we’d be at my place and all bets would be off. I was pretty sure Mr. Hyde would come out then. “So have you been Dr. Jekyll all this time?”
He snorted. “I barely finished high school. That’s pretty far from a doctorate.”
